What Do Business Leaders And Mashed Potatoes Have In Common?
What Do Business Leaders And Mashed Potatoes Have In Common?
Sometimes in sports, you hear an athlete described as “automatic.” Like when Steph Curry has a wide open 3 – he’s automatic. Serena Williams serving for the win – she’s automatic.
It might sound strange considering that BOS Media strongly believes in being more human – why would we want to highlight such a robotic form of excellence?
The past few weeks, we’ve been getting you ready for 2022 by discussing the best ways to create systems for success. Research says that 40-50% of what we do each day is habitual – “behaviors that have been repeated enough times that they become more or less automatic.” Those statistics might actually be low, since habits often determine how we spend the next chunk of our time as well.
Think about a habit many of us have: taking our phone out to check it. We all know how that one habit can take us down a rabbit hole – an entry point for many hours of behaviors and decisions that follow.
But what if you could use this tendency to your advantage? What if the habits that lead to positive outcomes also became automatic?
“Automaticity” is yet another principle I’ve learned from James Clear. It’s important because most of the behaviors that produce the best outcomes require no training whatsoever. They’re things we already know how to do! We don’t need to train the behavior – we just need to train making it automatic.
As we said last week: “You don’t rise to the level of your goals; you fall to the level of your systems.”
In other words: STOP SETTING GOALS. That’s not going to bring about the results you’re looking for. Instead, put your energy into the system of habits we’ve been discussing – tiny habits that become automatic are the most proven way to see lasting change.
James Clear likes to say, “Outcomes are a lagging measure for the behavior that came before. Don’t design the outcome; design for the behaviors that lead to the outcome.”
So what do business leaders and mashed potatoes have in common?
Consistency. Whether you like lumpy or smooth, what really matters is being the type of leader who shows up to the job and people know: “they’re automatic.”
Happy Thanksgiving!
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